


Bury Your Doubts

by TheWalkingGrimes



Series: Tales of District Four [11]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Johanna’s general issues, Mentions of off-screen suicide, Sex Trafficking, Suicidal Thoughts, listen I love their friendship ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28953252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: As a rule, Johanna Mason doesn’t have friends.Finnick Odair proves to be the exception.
Relationships: Johanna Mason & Finnick Odair, Mentioned Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Series: Tales of District Four [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018845
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Bury Your Doubts

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from “Goodbye” by Apparat, which really reminds me of Johanna for some reason.

  
Johanna Mason doesn’t expect to like Finnick Odair.

In fact, she sort of expects to fucking hate him.

The camaraderie they strike during the 72nd Games is a surprise to her - and to everyone else around them. The boy from his District was one of Johanna’s most frightening adversaries - and one of her bloodiest kills. He was the son of a victor, yet when her Victory Tour stops in District Four, Athena Ford’s accusational stare doesn’t glare back at her and no one mentions her. It’s like she’s a ghost.

A warm reception from one of his mentors is the last thing Johanna expects but that is what she receives. For whatever reason, Finnick meets her and instantly decides he _likes_ her. Suddenly he’s like a tick she can’t shake off: he appears at her elbow during parties, handing her a series of increasingly disgusting sugary drinks that he claims will be ‘just to your taste’ and laughs when she spits them in his face. 

Occasionally she finds herself stuck in a mind-numbing conversation with some old beaurocrat when Finnick pops in out of nowhere, all dazzling smiles and suggestive jokes, sucking all the attention toward himself as he always does until the old men are paying her no attention. At first it annoys Johanna, because obviously he’s trying to steal potential sponsors from her and he’s just playing nice with her to make her drop her guard easier. Except he keeps doing it even when both their tributes are dead, and by that point she’s starting to wonder if there’s more to him than meets the eye. 

Everyone assumes that they’re sleeping together. Johanna can tell, by the way the other victors eye them whenever she’s sitting on a couch in the lounge and Finnick sprawls down next to her, swinging his feet into her lap because he has absolutely no boundaries. Or when they get a little tipsy at the bar and start laughing too loudly at each other’s jokes - okay look, Finnick is fucking _funny_ and apparently he thinks she is too though Johanna’s not sure why - and cameras will flash like they’re capturing some elicit tryst. 

“You should be careful with that.” Heath tells her quietly at dinner one night. “Finnick’s not exactly _available.”_

He says that with significant weight, but Johanna doesn’t understand. Not yet. She scowls at her mentor. “It’s not anything, he’s just less boring than the rest of you. We’re not even friends, it’s just a way to pass the time. I’m not stupid.”

Because having a crush on _Finnick Odair_ would be more than stupid - it would be asinine. Even if his reputation didn’t literally precede him, just from hanging around him she would have picked up on it. The sheer amount of times that he’s left her at the drop of the dime to go flirt with fancy, rich Capitolites or flounced into the mentor lounge to check on his tributes at three o’clock in the morning stinking of alcohol and sex is staggering.

Johanna’s heard that people can be addicted to sex and wonders if maybe that’s his way of coping with the things he did in his Games, like the morphling addicts from Six or Blight and his booze. If she were Finnick’s friend, maybe she would ask him. But she’s not - they’re just tentative allies at best, so it’s not really her business. 

She also definitely doesn’t have a crush on him, so when they’re hanging out on the District Seven floor one night toward the end of the Games and Finnick’s spewing some nonsense about selkies and other District Four legends, Johanna risks nothing by curling her hand around the back of his neck and leaning in to kiss him.

At first it seems like he’s going to reciprocate - which she expects him to, because he’s been giving her signals for _weeks_ now and this is what she thinks he wants - until he’s pulling away with a laugh. “Woah, woah. Guess those fruity drinks are starting to kick in, huh?”

Johanna rolls her eyes. “As if.” Finnick and the weak drinks he keeps giving her even though he knows by now that she prefers straight, rich liquor is a running joke between them at this point. “If you’re trying to be _chivalrous,_ don’t worry. I’m sober.”

“Uh- _huh.”_ Finnick’s still smiling but it looks strained. “Jo, please don’t take this the wrong way but I’d just really like to be friends.”

That takes her aback. And for a moment Johanna feels the rejection like the barely nineteen year old girl that she is. She _doesn’t_ have a crush on him god damnit (absolutely not. She refuses to be that _stupid)_ but she’s grown to genuinely enjoy his company and it had felt nice to think she had his attention. Like she was maybe actually as attractive as the strange woman they dress her up into for the cameras. That someone had wanted her - not Johanna Mason, vicious killer, but Jo. Just Jo.

The teenager in her wants to snap back at him something mean and classic _Johanna Mason:_ that literally everyone thinks they’re sleeping together because of the way he follows her around like a fucking puppy. She could spit out something cutting about how apparently she’s not _rich_ enough for him.

But something in his face stops her, and she can see it in his eyes - that he actually _does_ want to be her friend. And for whatever reason, them having sex would ruin that for him.

It occurs to her that she’s seen Finnick flirt with and even kiss countless people in public, but she hasn’t seen anyone else make him laugh so hard that he snorts. That he saves just for her.

Johanna sighs and flops dramatically back against the back of the couch. “Fine. I _suppose_ if I’ve put up with you this long, I guess I’m stuck with you, huh?”

Finnick’s smile turns into a real one. He’s _beaming_ at her. “Guess so. I’m like one of those sharksuckers. You can’t shake me off.”

“A _what?”_

“A sharksucker. They’re these little fish that stick to sharks and -”

“That’s not a real thing.”

“It _is._ They attach themselves to sharks, sometimes whales - when they do that, then they’re called _whalesuckers-”_

Johanna throws a pillow at him. “I am begging you, please don’t ever call yourself a _whalesucker_ again. Now that we’re _friends,_ I don’t need those mental images.”

“You have a dirty mind, Miss Mason. A dirty, dirty mind.” 

They end up falling asleep on the couch together, on opposite ends with their legs entangled. Heath wakes them up with a grumble and an annoyed expression. 

“It’s eleven o’clock.” He tells them, and Finnick bolts up so fast it gives her whiplash.

“Shit. I overslept. I have a - ” He looks over at Johanna. “Somewhere to be.”

“Yeah, I thought you might.” Heath says, but he doesn’t sound accusational or angry. 

“Sorry I’ve gotta run.” Finnick drops a quick kiss on her head, and it’s unclear if this surprises Johanna or Heath more, but he seems to do it almost unconsciously. “See you later, Jo.”

“See you, _whalesucker.”_ Johanna calls after him, and laughs when he gives her the finger. 

As soon as the door is shut, Heath asks pointedly, _“Jo?”_

“Oh calm down Heath, we didn’t sleep together.”

Heath sighs. “I told you to be careful.”

“It’s really none of your business.” Johanna insists. “So maybe you could fuck off?”

“Believe me Johanna, I wish I could.” Heath tells her, looking exhausted. “I really wish I could.”

  
  


* * *

Over a week later, her mentor’s face has a red mark from where Johanna slapped him.

“Why didn’t you _tell me?”_ She seethes. Screams, really.

“I wasn’t allowed to.” To Heath’s credit, he doesn’t raise his hand to touch the mark. He just stares back at her, with that guilty look in his eyes that makes Johanna feel sick. “I was told not to say anything until there was a new victor. They didn’t want you to lose it in front of the cameras -”

Johanna laughs. Loudly. Maybe hysterically.

“-and you do have a tendency for emotional outbursts.”

“Fuck you.”

“Johanna, it wasn’t my decision. I swear it. If I were only worried about myself, I would’ve told you as soon as I could. We all wanted to tell you, but we weren’t allowed. Some people don’t even get a warning.”

“I don’t give a shit about _some people.”_ Johanna rages at him, because the only way she can keep from crying. “I won’t. I won’t do it. Fuck them. Fuck all of them.”

Heath grabs her shoulder, forces her to sit. “Johanna, _listen to me._ Snow does _not_ fuck around, okay? If he tells you to do something, you do it. Saying no is a luxury you don’t get to have anymore.”

“A luxury?” She glares up at him, rubbing at her eyes. “You’re the worst mentor in the fucking world, Heath. _A luxury?”_

“I am trying to save you, because you are too young and too stupid to understand that your actions have consequences. For _other_ people.” Heath snaps at her. “The people you care about are all your collateral now. There is a price to survival.”

Johanna feels the fire doused from her abruptly as she thinks about her father. Her last family left. _It’s us against the world, Jo._ He’d always say, when he brought her out into the woods and taught her how to throw axes. _All we’ve got is each other._

“I can’t get out of it?” She asks Heath, her voice tiny now that all the heat has been snuffed out. “There’s no way to get out of it? There isn’t anything I can do?”

He sits down next to her and even though she hates him, Johanna leans against the comforting warmth. “Just do what you’re told, and if you’re lucky they’ll get tired of you quickly.” 

_And if I’m not lucky?_ She wants to ask, but realizes with another cold lurch that she knows the answer. 

If they don’t get tired of her, they’ll turn her into Finnick.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Heath asks her if she wants him to be waiting for her on the District Seven floor after her first appointment.

Johanna’s feeling less that generous - and terrified - when he asks her, so she snaps, “I don’t want you within one hundred feet of me, or I might claw off your face.”

So Heath isn’t waiting for her. 

But Finnick is.

“Hey,” he says, and for the first time since she’s known him there’s no trace of amusement on his face. “Thought you might want some company. Do you want me to go, or stay?”

Johanna wraps her blankets more tightly around her like a shield. They gave her drugs in Remake because she wouldn’t stop hysterically crying and now she feels like she’s floating a million miles out in space. “You can stay.”

“Okay.” Finnick pulls up the pouf from the corner until he’s just out of reach. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Her skin crawls. “No.”

His eyes look so sad. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to, but I wasn’t allowed.”

She doesn’t tell him it’s okay. “Can you tell me more stupid facts about fish?”

“Do you know anything about octopus?” Finnick doesn’t even question it. 

“The hell is that?”

“They’re these sea creatures, they’ve got eight arms and they’re super smart. They have suction cups on their arms and they can stick to anything.”

“Gross.” Johanna snuggles deeper into her blankets. “Tell me more.”

“They can camouflage to look like their surroundings, and when they want to escape they squirt out this ink that covers everything and…”

  
  


* * *

  
  


It takes Johanna’s father four months to break it out of her.

They’re too close. He can read her like one of his books, and he knows something is _wrong_ almost as soon as she steps off the train. 

“Something happened.” He keeps saying, over and over again until she breaks. “What happened, Jo?”

Finally, she does break, one day when they’re out in the woods, safe and surrounded by pine trees and the security of the forest. She tells him, and he cries, and she screams, and he holds her and rocks her and says, “What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?” like some broken loop.

 _Nothing,_ she tells him. _There’s nothing any of us can do._

Johanna gets a letter from Snow’s office, requesting her presence in the Capitol for the Victory Tour. It arrives when her father is home, and he opens it before she can.

He takes her out into the woods again, and they get into a screaming match about it.

“You’re not going.” Her father insists. “No fucking way am I letting them do that to you again. You tell em ‘no’, Jo.”

“That’s not a _luxury_ I have anymore.” She yells back at him, furious that he’s making her take _Heath’s_ side of all people. “I can’t say no.”

“They need you, Jo. You’re the ‘Hero of District Seven’ for chrissake.” It shows, really, how desperate that he is that her father would ever call her that. He hates that moniker even more than she does. “They can’t hurt you worse than they’re already hurting you if you say no. They’re too afraid to.”

“They will kill you.” Johanna cries. “Don’t you understand that? Don’t you get that would hurt me more than anything else they could ever do to me? I can’t lose you - I can’t - I can’t -”

This time, when her father tries to hug her, she doesn’t let him.

He’s quiet for the next week, and the air between them is as cold as the creeping winter frost.

One night, he comes into her room and kisses her on her forehead. 

“I love you Jo.” He tells her, even though she’s giving him the silent treatment and pretending to be asleep. “I’m so proud of you. You’re the best thing I’ve ever done. I love you so much.”

Johanna doesn’t open her eyes. 

When she comes down for breakfast the next morning, there’s a bloody note on the kitchen table.

She never sees her father alive again.

  
  


* * *

They still drag her out to the 73rd Games. They force her into compliance with guilt about her tributes, threats against her District at home and in the Games, and pull the bare minimum out of her. She’s present. That’s about it.

“Do you have any advice?” The boy tribute, a gangly little shit who could be thirteen or sixteen for all Johanna knows, asks her in a wavering voice.

Johanna pours herself a drink of straight Bruichladdich. It’s eight o’clock in the morning.

“Run straight for the Cornucopia.”

“She’s kidding.” Heath says, while Blight grabs the bottle that Johanna set down on the table. He looks even more tired than ever. 

“No, I’m serious. You’ll be better off in the long run.” Johanna snatches the bottle back from Blight and takes it with her into her room.

They still put her in fancy dresses and heels and trot her out to parties. Old men still flirt with her like last year and Johanna makes a lot of comments about axes and penises that are more effective at scaring them off than Finnick’s interventions ever were.

This year, Finnick’s interventions are a bit different and much more transparent. Instead of fruity drinks, he tries to ply her with water. He doesn’t stick his feet in her lap anymore, just sits next to her and talks to her about stupid District Four stuff.

“Finnick, leave me alone.” Johanna tells him bluntly. “I don’t want to be friends.”

He’s still got that dumb smile on his face but his eyes pin her down. “What do you want Jo?”

“Nothing.” She says honestly. “I don’t want anything anymore.”

He stares at her for a long time, like he’s thinking about something. “Hang out with me tomorrow.”

Johanna slams her glass down so harshly it almost shatters. “Finnick, fuck off okay? I said I don’t want to be friends, so just leave me the fuck alone.”

“Please, Jo, I’ve got the night off. I just really, really need a break. To get my mind off everything.” He looks up at her through his lashes with big, sad puppy eyes and says quietly, “I’ve had a rough couple of nights.”

Manipulative bastard. Johanna has no doubt he knows exactly what he’s doing. If she were a bigger bitch, she’d tell him that she didn’t give a shit.

“Fine. _One_ night. But I’m not doing it because I want to. I’m only doing it because I feel sorry for you.” Alright, maybe she’s still a pretty big bitch. 

Either way, it doesn’t seem to bother Finnick. “Fantastic. I’ll pick you up at ten. Wear something to go clubbing.”

“Seriously? I thought you needed a _break,_ why would you-” But he’s already bounded off, talking to some old Gamemaker she really hopes isn’t his date for tonight. 

Johanna is already wasted when Finnick shows up. For some reason, this _annoys_ him.

“We’re going clubbing, isn’t this the point?” She asks. 

He pushes water at her. Yet again. “You’re going to want to be sober tonight.”

She’s not, by the time Finnick finally agrees to leave, but she’s at least significantly less sloppy when Finnick leads her into a sketchy club that really doesn’t seem like his scene. Judging by all the junkies shooting up in corners, she would’ve expected the District 6 victors to drag her out here, not Panem’s golden party boy.

Something about the bliss on the addicts’ faces is so tempting to her. Johanna moves toward them almost unconsciously, but Finnick pulls her away with a dark look.

He takes her downstairs into an even sketchier basement, and even though Johanna doesn’t give a shit about anything anymore, her survival instincts kick in like a bad habit she can’t break. “Please tell me this is where you murder me. Or are we going to fuck?”

He rolls his eyes. _“No,_ Johanna. Just… one second…”

There’s a buzzing noise and the Gamemaker that Finnick was speaking to the day before steps out of the shadows. Johanna nearly jumps out her shoes.

“Shit-” In spite of everything, her first instinct is to _grab for Finnick’s hand,_ for some stupid reason.

“It’s okay.” Finnick reassures her. “You can trust him. He’s a _friend.”_

“I apologize for the unusual meeting location.” The Gamemaker stretches out his hand toward her. Johanna eyes it like a stray cat would. “Plutarch Heavensbee. Landscaping Gamemaker, and a sympathizer.”

“Sympathizer?” She repeats, not understanding. 

“We have some mutual interests. Or so Finnick tells me. I was sorry to hear about your father.”

Johanna’s first reaction is to yell, to lash out, because how _dare_ this Gamemaker speak of her father. But Finnick’s hand is squeezing hers tightly and what did he mean by mutual interests?

“I heard he left you a note. What did it say?”

Only Blight knew that. His house was next to hers, and he was the one who came running when she screamed bloody murder at the sight of her father’s body in the kitchen.

“It said, _Don’t let them win, Jo._ ”

Plutarch nods gravely at her. 

“See? Mutual interests.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


“Should’ve known you’d be involved in some dumb shit like this.” Johanna tells Finnick after Plutarch has gone. She’s feigning apathetic, but there’s no way he misses the way her heart is racing, the color that has returned to her skin or the life to her eyes. “How _did_ you get involved, anyway?”

Finnick gives her a grim look. He hasn’t smiled a single time they’ve been down in this basement. “I knew Plutarch from my first year as a victor, Mags had vouched for him, but he didn’t approach me about any of this until your Games.”

“Why did he wait so long?”

“I had to prove myself first. They’re pretty fucking careful about this stuff, if they get even one wrong person involved, the whole thing goes down.”

That doesn’t quite add up. “But somehow I’m not a risk?”

“We’re all a risk.” Finnick tells her seriously. “But I pushed for you.”

“Why?”

He drops his eyes. 

“I was worried what you’d do if I didn’t.”

The overwhelming coldness that has encompassed Johanna since her father’s death warms just a few degrees. And for a moment she feels a spark of _something else._

“How did you prove yourself?” Johanna asks - because now that the fog is gone she remembers that questions like this matter - that _he_ matters to her. This Finnick, looking solemnly at his feet, broken but somehow still _rebellious,_ willing to fight for what he believed… this is someone she feels more than apathy for.

He looks at her again, and there’s a question warring in his eyes as if he’s debating being honest with her, then-

“I fucked a Gamemaker so that she’d rig the Games.” 

Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Johanna lets out a shocked laugh. “What the fuck?”

“The earthquake, the year before yours.” Finnick explains, licking his lips - nervously, not seductively. “I knew they had a new earthquake feature in development, so it was just a matter of finding the right person who could be, ah, _easily swayed_ into triggering one that would burst the dam and flood the other tributes.”

Right. The most recent Four victor, the mad girl. Annie, who Johanna has met once, and the other girl spent the entire two minute conversation staring at her feet.

“Plutarch found out about it, and recruited me.”

“Why, so you can fuck people for _him?”_ Johanna asks, suddenly uneasy. 

“They haven’t asked me to, no.” Finnick doesn’t say whether or not he would if he were asked. Johanna doesn’t think she wants to know. “But it proved to them that I was willing to stand up against the Capitol, even with something to lose.”

There’s something odd, strained about the way he says that. Even now, he’s holding something back from her.

“Who does he have on you, anyway?” She asks. She probably wouldn’t, if she were kinder and more sober. 

“My brother and his wife. Mags.” 

He hesitates, gives her that calculating look again. 

Then he says so quietly it’s almost inaudible: “Annie.”

_Ah._

It would be easy to mistake the way he says her name as something else. Some kind of protective affection since she’s so fragile, wasn’t he her mentor maybe?

But there’s no mistaking that look on his face. Mostly because Johanna’s never seen him look anything _close_ to it when he’s been with other people.

Including her.

“And yet you’re still here.” Johanna asks, stuffing down any stupid feelings she’s having and focusing on the much, much more important thing at hand. “You’d risk all that?”

“It’s for them.” Finnick says. “I’m here anyway. I’ve got access to people and events that most people - most _Victors_ even - don’t. Might as well put that to good use.”

He makes it sound so simple. Like he’s not talking about the thing that had broken Johanna so badly her father killed himself so she wouldn’t have to go through that again.

For the first time since his death, Johanna lets the memories of her father wash over her. The things he would tell her when they were safely out in the woods, far away from the Peacekeepers. Rebellious whispers amidst the smell of pines, and tales of a secret underground that led fugitives away to a forgotten district, out of the Capitol’s reach. 

Johanna will never let herself be sold again. She refuses to let her father’s death be any more pointless than it already is.

But there are other ways she can make herself useful.

“Yeah.” She agrees with her friend, baring her teeth into a war-grin. “Might as well.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> It’s my personal head canon that when Katniss brings Johanna the bundle of sap and pine needles and Johanna cries smelling it, that she’s thinking about her father.
> 
> Also, I just re-read the last few chapters of Mockingjay again and my god is that book dark. All those people who die as Katniss is making her way to Snow’s mansion... I forgot how much the movies glossed over that (which, I don’t blame them for. It would have completely changed the tone and rating of the movie. And Mockingjay part II was already dark enough, it didn’t need that). But anyway, I don’t think it fully registered when I read those books before, probably because I was too young to really grasp how horrifying it was.


End file.
